Reflection and Analysis

General - Young Fans and the Adult Space Reality (11/07/24)

There's no getting around the fact that fandom is an adult space. This was certainly recognized when I first started fandom, but it became less and less recognized as fandom attempted to become more welcoming to younger fans without ever tackling the issue of internet safety and how fandom spaces online aren't a safe place for the young writer without appropriate adult supervision.

For me, this hit home because of NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo operated under the same guise as fandom has, without any checks and balances regarding protecting young writers from online predators. A major incident came to light during NaNoWriMo last year, which in turn resulted in the forums being shut down—they still are shut down as of NaNoWriMo starting up this year. A major move was to make certain spaces that were all ages, such as the forums, not be so once they open.

And this, in turn, got me thinking of the lack of responsibility from fandom, not so much on the part of the site administrators, as sites like Wattpad and Ao3 have a policy of reporting potential predators to the proper authorities if alerted, but more of from those using the sites and how over and over I hear from other individuals that it's not their problem, that the issue falls onto the shoulders of the parents who aren't correctly supervising their children.

Children, though, are sneaky, and I think we should, at the very least, emphasize the importance of not engaging in fandom without appropriate adult supervision. This isn't to say children shouldn't be involved in fandom.

Actually, teens aren't children, something many teens will correct an adult on, but the very fact we in fandom refer to young writers as such says a lot in itself. A child or children is someone under the age of puberty, although it can also mean below the age of majority. Teens don't like being lumped in as a group with those under the age of puberty simply because they are below the age of majority; it is condescending in nature to them.

Yet the point remains the same. Teens shouldn't be navigating any social space without appropriate adult supervision.

I think part of the reason behind not insisting there be adult supervision is how fandom is considered a safe space for minority groups, and a young writer questioning their sexuality may not feel comfortable outing themselves to their parents if there are homophobic leanings; yet, in saying this, the chances of a young writer facing that problem aren't the same as it was when I first joined, and we should be aware that these young writers are likely to face acceptance.

The far more likely scenario then is a young writer whose parents are anti-writing instead, who thinks writing creatively is a waste of their young writer's time, to which there should be more emphasis on how fanfic writing can build skills, such as practicing grammar conventions, providing a way for a teen to distress while there is also a building of thinking critically--

Well, if fandom actually pushed thinking critically as the ideal rather than bad mouthing it whenever they can get, along with the building of any skills that are ideal for a young fanfic writer to be building upon which in turn makes the whole thing just a game in the eyes of the parents and give them all the more reason not to let their child participate under appropriate adult supervision.

And I think in this day and age fanfic writing, even reading, can be a way to open up conversations for parents, such as discussing their child's sexuality, or even pointing out that fetishizing gay people actually isnt' a good thing, that the young writer should instead treat them just like they would any other person in their stories.

Which, ironically, the fight against critique from the anti-critique crowd is argued in part on protecting the children, yet they do nothing, never arguing these teens should be approrpiatly supervised in what they do, that parents aren't able to have conversation regarding reviewing NSFW things their teens really shouldn't be viewing.

Yet, as I've said, fandom is an adult space, so any teen interacting with it should be able to handle critique, aka, act like an adult, but the anti-critique crowd often degrades young writers as writing those Mary Sues which their work (the work of the anti-critique crowd) is better than despite the opposite being often true -- the anti-critique crowd often doesn't act like adults.

So, with what happened with NaNoWriMo, I think fandom as a whole needs to have a good hard think about young writers in fandom, not so much about whether they are welcome or not, but more of in encouraging actual safe behaviors so these young writers in fandom aren't preyed upon, but I also think fandom should be more supportive of parents attempting to navigate fandom with their children, teens and not-teens alike.

Which, I don't think there's been much thought of parents within fandom, in part because parents involved in fandom already know of the safety issues and are better able to engage the topic with their teens, while parents who never engaged are confused as hell. There is for them persay, no guide to terms and essays on things they want to discuss with their children before they even start navigating the web.